


Goodbye Letters

by glitterstains



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M, tatbilb au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2020-07-30 05:31:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20092063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glitterstains/pseuds/glitterstains
Summary: to all the boys i've loved before au - markhyuckwhen donghyuck's love letters are 'accidentally' sent out, his genius plan to avoid the confrontation is to fake-date mark lee, resident jock, but most importantly, donghyuck's cute pizza delivery guy, who is in the wrong place at the wrong time. (but really, the perfect place at the perfect time.)





	Goodbye Letters

Donghyuck’s cycle of love:

1\. Develop crush (usually all of a sudden)  
2\. Become a little obsessed (the butterflies phase)  
3\. Realise his crush will never be reciprocated  
4\. Become crushed by the crush  
5\. Finally, write a ‘goodbye’ letter  
<strike>6\. Repeat from step one<strike></strike></strike>

Just like clockwork. Donghyuck’s letters were the only breath of freedom in this harsh recipe of heartbreak, until he became consumed by delusion again. It was sort of weird, the way he got so quickly attached, yet so quickly exorcised by pouring out his feelings through flowing, purple gel pen. When he sealed the letters, it was something akin to a wave swallowing everything in its path before leaving again for a later date. Weird indeed, but sort of like a blessing, he supposed. There were three letters in total, with a fourth torn up and flushed away before it could be finished. That one didn’t count. _Teen angst,_ he blamed it on, the to-be recipient long repressed in Donghyuck’s mind. 

Ninth grade: the first letter. It was likely masked by a layer of dust in Donghyuck’s closet by now, but he remembered everything about that letter, and the feelings it contained, as clear as day. It was tightly sealed, with an address nearly identical to Donghyuck’s, spare one number. That summer had given Donghyuck his first real crush, and with it, the first dip into what would soon become Donghyuck’s cruel cycle of love. 

His childhood best friend and neighbour, as the cliché goes. It was almost inevitable. Na Jaemin, with his charming smile and flirtatious humour, how could Donghyuck’s weak heart not have fallen? He’d read about this in countless stories, but to live in that reality was not as sugary as he had imagined. Donghyuck’s caramel eyes began to drown under rose coloured glasses, and it wasn’t long before his crush on Jaemin started to weigh down on their friendship. That’s when Donghyuck wrote his first letter. It was a goodbye to his romantic feelings, but it ended up doubling as a snapshot of the feelings that filled their last days together. As he walked the short walk to Jaemin’s mailbox, he saw that instead of the usual car in Jaemin’s driveway, there was a moving van. The cupid’s arrow that had shot Donghyuck in the heart became a twisting dagger, and Donghyuck had run home and locked himself in his room for the last week of summer. Through tear filled eyes and closed curtains, he’d missed the silhouette still in the window next to his, and through blasting earphones, he’d missed the knocks on his bedroom door on the day that Jaemin left. Donghyuck tortured himself with the idea that Jaemin had left so suddenly without saying goodbye, and that most of all, it was all his fault. 

The second letter was more recent, addressed to a crush buried only six months earlier. Huang Renjun, another subject of Donghyuck’s intense infatuation, was someone he had only exchanged around three minutes of conversation with in their entire five years of high school together. He was on the soccer team, and after a successful game, smiled at Donghyuck while running a hand through his (yes, sweaty) hair. Another love-laced arrow had been shot into Donghyuck’s heart, and he found himself dreamily looking over to Renjun’s table every lunchtime. The only fuel to the fire were the smiles Renjun would always send his way, mixed signals which Donghyuck was still unable to interpret, forever hopeless in the game of love. Therefore, he wrote his second letter. A goodbye letter to the ambiguity that was plaguing his every moment, wondering if Renjun, too, liked cats, whenever he walked by the pet store. Wondering if Renjun even knew his name, if his kindness towards Donghyuck was all just charity work towards the friendless boy. 

The third and latest letter. _To Lee Jeno,_ it read. Donghyuck’s tutor for his mid-term exams. They were the same age, but Jeno had skipped a grade in primary school. Something about his adorable habits, intelligence, and the amount of time they spent so close together, made him fall far too quickly. It distracted Donghyuck from the studying he was supposed to be doing, for exams absolutely vital to his future. When he asked millions of questions, it wasn’t _just_ to play dumb.Although it was a short-lived crush, hardly warranting a letter, Donghyuck felt it was best to write one, just to make sure. He could afford to replace his purple gel pen, but he couldn’t afford to fail his mid-terms. 

Having crushes was exhausting, and not something Donghyuck wanted his life to revolve around. He desperately hoped that his third letter was his last. To make sure of this, he brought in a kitchen stool to reach his letters from the top shelf of his closet. While brushing off the dust from each letter, he briefly relished in the memories that prompted him to write them. Carefully, he buried them in a foul-smelling box full of his older brother Taeyong’s clothes, set in the living room to be donated along with the rest of the junk cleared during the Lee family’s annual spring cleaning. _To make sure they aren’t intercepted by my siblings,_ he thought. Maybe someone who collects mysterious letters would appreciate them. Maybe they’d just get thrown out. Whatever happened to them, Donghyuck knew this: he was ready to let go. 


End file.
